Britain and France are preparing to send a joint military delegation to Ukraine in an effort to determine how any future ceasefire deal can be supported on the ground, Sir Keir Starmer said after a summit in Paris on Thursday.
The prime minister also called for a deadline for Russia to come to the negotiating table, adding: “We need to see this developing in days and weeks, not months and months”.
Sir Keir said: “We will be ready to operationalise a peace deal whenever its precise shape turns out to be, and we will work together to ensure Ukraine’s security so it can defend and deter against the future.”
It came as French president Emmanuel Macron said it is “not up to Russia what happens on Ukrainian soil” after the Russian leader ruled out allowing the so-called coalition of the willing to deploy a peacekeeping force in the country.
After a meeting of 30 countries in the coalition, Sir Keir said there had been “clear progress” in the assembly of a peacekeeping force since talks began a month ago, with more countries willing to join Britain and France in sending troops to Ukraine.
But he was unable to give tangible evidence of the coalition having come closer to assembling the much-touted peacekeeping force in the four meetings it has convened so far.
The PM stressed that Europe “has not been this strongly united for a very long time” as he lashed out at Mr Putin’s “filibustering” in talks to end his invasion of Ukraine, buying time to rebuild its armed forces.
He threatened a fresh round of sanctions against the Russian dictator and his allies in a bid to force Mr Putin to take negotiations seriously. He also vowed to marshal more military aid for Volodymyr Zelensky to “keep Ukraine in the fight” while talks rumble on.
Mr Macron said Britain and France will “task our chiefs of defence to ensure that a Franco-British team should be sent to Ukraine in the next few days to work very closely with our Ukrainian partners”.
The trip is aimed at determining “what is required in terms of the number of soldiers and what equipment and hardware is required in order to deter and respond to future Russian aggression”, he added.
Mr Zelensky spoke alongside Sir Keir outside the British ambassador’s house in Paris, piling pressure on Western leaders to keep sanctions against Mr Putin in place until the war is over.
The EU has committed to not lifting any sanctions on Russia until it has fully withdrawn from Ukraine, while Sir Keir said he is prepared to double down on sanctions.
The meeting in Paris came after Ukraine and Russia agreed to pause hostilities in the Black Sea following talks brokered by the US in Saudi Arabia.
In statements published by the White House, the Trump administration also appeared to signal its intention to ease sanctions on Russian agricultural goods and improve Moscow’s access to maritime insurance, ports and payment systems as part of the deal.
But Ukraine and its European allies firmly pushed back against the plans. President Zelensky said sanctions were “one of the few real tools the world has to pressure Russia into serious talks”.
Thursday’s meeting also saw Sir Keir update the group of 30 nations with the outcomes of a series of military planning talks for a possible peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
Officials and defence chiefs have been holding talks at London’s Northwood military headquarters throughout the week, drawing up a strategy to support Kyiv and deter future aggression from Moscow.
Fighting continues in Ukraine with both sides accusing each other of breaking the terms of a tentative US-backed agreement to pause strikes on energy infrastructure.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed Ukrainian drone attacks hit power facilities in the Bryansk and Kursk regions this week, which Ukraine dismissed as Kremlin disinformation aimed at justifying continued hostilities.
Ukrainian officials have said Moscow is “lying” about observing a ceasefire on energy infrastructure and has carried out eight confirmed hits on power sites since the deal was struck.
On Thursday, Mr Zelensky also warned that Russia was preparing “new offensives” against the Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, while “dragging out the talks and trying to get the US stuck in endless, pointless discussions about fake ‘conditions’ just to buy time and then try to grab more land”.
